Couple Reflects On 30 Years Of Enfield's Sparkle Services

STEPHEN DUNN, Hartford Courant

Jeff and Kim Tingley started their Sparkle Services, Inc. cleaning services company 30 years ago in 1985. The couple began with the ancient Hoover vacuum and broom that they are holding inside their company headquarters in an Enfield Industrial Park.

Jeff and Kim Tingley started their Sparkle Services, Inc. cleaning services company 30 years ago in 1985. The couple began with the ancient Hoover vacuum and broom that they are holding inside their company headquarters in an Enfield Industrial Park. (STEPHEN DUNN, Hartford Courant)

The couple, who are both 50 and live in Enfield, started dating a few years prior to launching their commercial cleaning business Sparkle Services Inc. at the ages of 20 in 1985.

"I always wanted to own a business," Jeff Tingley said. "But I had exactly no money. With a VISA credit card we bought a used vacuum."

But getting business wasn't easy in the beginning.

"There was a lot of rejection, especially because I was so young," Jeff Tingley said. "I would really have to regenerate myself after so many rejections."

Throughout those rejections, though, his wife Kim Tingley was always there for him. They married in 1987 and have two sons, Scott, 24, and Michael, 23.

"It was really hard at times," Kim Tingley said. "There was a lot of sacrifice."

Kim did the bookkeeping and Jeff did the sales. But they both cleaned together, mostly at night or on weekends.

In their first month of business the two did $40 in sales, and that's before accounting for any expenses. One time, Jeff was cleaning a pizza restaurant for $10 and some food because that was better than no money and going home from work hungry.

It wasn't until 1989 that the two were able to hire their first employees.

Then, in 1992, the two realized it was time to push the business forward out of sheer necessity. They were renting a condo and busy raising both of their children. They needed more money.

"I didn't want to show her that I was concerned about $200," Jeff Tingley said. "We were barely making it. We just had to grow it."

The two became more aggressive with their sales and added more clientele. Now, 30 years after starting the company, they have 25 employees and service over 100 buildings between their 60 regular customers. They provide cleaning and other services 24 hours a day. Local clients include Hallmark, Eppendorf, FedEX and UPS.

And as of last week they now own the building of their second customer, Sterling Machine, at 119 Post Road in Enfield, which they used to clean together in their early days of the business.

"The single biggest thing to success is determination," Jeff Tingley said. "We all fail. It's about getting back up and learning from those failures. We have to be able to be strong enough to withstand it."

And so even when the two were in college and weren't able to join their friends for dinners or elsewhere, Jeff and Kim Tingley could always rely on one another for inspiration to keep going.

"How many times would we say, 'We've always got each other during the hardest times?" Kim Tingley said. "That helped."